Cemex settles with EPA over New Braunfels plant pollution

1of7Cattle graze in a pasture near the Cemex plant in New Braunfels in 2009. Cemex agreed this week to a settlement with federal regulators over air-polluting emissions.Photo: San Antonio Express-News file photo

2of7The Cemex cement plant in New Braunfels expanded in 2007. The company will have to add $10 million worth of equipment at its plants in New Braunfels and four other cities. It will also have to pay a $1.69 million penalty.Photo: San Antonio Express-News file photo

3of7Zachry Construction workers pre-assemble preheat vessels for the new construction at the Cemex plant in New Braunfels in 2007.Photo: San Antonio Express-News file photo

4of7Cemex added new equipment at its New Braunfels plant in 2007.Photo: San Antonio Express-News file photo

5of7Work done on the Cemex New Braunfels plant in 2007 was valued at $250 million.Photo: San Antonio Express-News file photo

6of7The Cemex cement plant in New Braunfels, as it was in 2007.Photo: San Antonio Express-News file photo

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Federal regulators have penalized an international cement company that serves on a local air quality board for not installing enough pollution controls at its plant in New Braunfels.

Cemex Inc. must pay a $1.69 million civil penalty and install $10 million worth of equipment at its New Braunfels plant and four others, according to a consent decree with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Justice.

In an email late Thursday, Cemex spokeswoman Megan Lawrence said Cemex installed the equipment mentioned in the settlement at its New Braunfels plant in 2008. She declined to discuss it over the phone.

The EPA alleged that Cemex had failed to obtain proper permits and use required equipment to cut emissions of nitrogen oxides and sulfur dioxides, violating the Clean Air Act, at its plants in New Braunfels; Odessa; Knoxville, Tennessee; Demopolis, Alabama; and Louisville, Kentucky.

“The cement sector is a significant source of air pollution posing real health risks to the communities where they reside, including vulnerable communities across the U.S. who deserve better air quality than they have gotten over the years,” Assistant Attorney General John C. Cruden said in a statement.

Sulfur dioxide emissions can react with other chemicals to form particles in the air, which can cause health problems on a regional level when they lodge deep the lungs, according to the EPA. Nitrogen oxides are a precursor to ground-level ozone, which also has negative public health effects.

The San Antonio metro area will likely exceed the EPA’s ozone limit for the first time in its history by next year.

A statement released by Cemex late Wednesday said the “long-running dispute with the EPA” focuses on “historical operations.” The company looks forward to closing the matter and moving forward with programs that “that focus on sustainability and have resulted in consistent regulatory compliance and environmental excellence,” it states.

In 2006, Cemex issued a news release stating it would spend about $220 million building a second kiln at the New Braunfels plant by 2008. The equipment installed at New Braunfels in 2008 helps Cemex “reduce emissions and comply with all its permit requirements,” Lawrence said in an email.

Neither she nor the EPA responded to follow-up questions about why the settlement mentioned New Braunfels.

The Cemex plant is the fourth-largest single emitter of nitrogen oxides in Bexar County and the seven counties bordering it, according to a draft report on the region’s ozone levels issued Wednesday by the Alamo Area Council of Governments.

AACOG has been working for years to lower the region’s ozone levels. Cemex employee Kimberly Bradley serves on AACOG’s air advisory committee, “made up of local civic and business leaders interested in air quality improvements within the region,” according to AACOG’s website. Efforts to reach Bradley on Thursday were not successful.

In 2014, AACOG gave Cemex an “air quality stewardship” award for several voluntary measures to cut emissions, including burning recycled fuels, improving roads to ease traffic and training employees not to idle their vehicles, among others.

AACOG officials declined to be interviewed about the settlement but issued a statement on Thursday.

“At that time, we were not aware of any legal dispute between Cemex and the (EPA),” it said. “We want to clarify that we seek to work with leading business leaders such as Cemex to forge partnerships with a common mission of a better environment and quality of life for all in our region.”

The Mexican-based company says it operates 13 cement plants, 46 distribution terminals, more than 75 aggregate quarries and more than 350 ready-mix concrete plants in the U.S.

This week’s settlement was not Cemex’s first with the EPA. In 2009, the agency entered into a consent decree with a Cemex subsidiary in California regarding emissions of nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxide and carbon monoxide at its Victorville, California, plant.

Brendan Gibbons covers the environment and water for the San Antonio Express-News. He joined the staff in October 2015 after two years of environmental reporting at The Times-Tribune in Scranton, Pennsylvania. A native of Grand Junction, Colorado, Brendan earned a degree in science journalism at the University of Missouri in 2013. He has worked as a copy editor for an English-language news site in Vietnam and as a staff writer for the online magazine Practical eCommerce. Other odd jobs included a stint as a science aide monitoring birds for the U.S. Forest Service and as an office assistant for a plant science lab in Missouri.